What is it about the normally withdrawn person that makes his sudden affections so compelling? For me, I think, it was the sense that this was only the start of much more to come, as if, after all the disappointments, you have suddenly found the entryway into this closed-off creature, a gate, a fount—a veritable bulging lava dome, out of which will shortly issue great waves of hot flowing loving passion! Or maybe it was nothing more than an evil kind of operant conditioning, the way you can drive a little lab rat crazy by giving it rewards at inconsistent, apparently random intervals. I glowed with happiness to learn he was crazy about me. And then I immediately looked down at my clothes, wondering: Is it this short skirt that got his attention? At my shoes: The boots? My hair? This new scarf? Was it the effect of the luggage cart I’d managed to snare without paying for it, which so satisfied James’s basic needs for bargains in all his transactions? I suppose it’s what comes of being raised, as I was, by parents who pay attention to you when they feel like it: you become nervous and superstitious, wondering what it is about this particular moment that makes you more lovable than in all those other moments when it seems you should have been equally lovable. In the hope of winning affection again, you wind up making painfully ridiculous associations. I wore that skirt the next two times I picked James up at the airport. I never again showed up at the gate without a luggage cart, even if I had to pay for it and lie about finding it for free.